Sunday, March 13:
Bad night. R. is tortured by his old abdominal trouble and is much out of humor in the morning; he also looks very run down. But at lunch he talks about his reading (Jacolliot).
At coffee we have a visit from Herr Loher, a privy councillor and archivist, who tells R. that in the years around 1852 the Tannhäuser Overture gave him the courage to see himself as a German. R. goes for a walk, still without me on account of my cough; then he works on his score and brings me a page, which we send to Herr Bovet in Paris. At supper, friend Feustel tells R. that he called on Hans in Meiningen, did not see him, and asked to be told within a week where he might speak with him.
In the evening Rub. plays us the music from the Paris Tannhäuser, and I see R., actually for the first time, take great pleasure in it: “If someone were to tell me to do such a thing, I should find it impossible.” He is pleased with its fullness, and when we are alone he asks himself what it is that makes the old Tannhäuser Overture so significant, for from a musical point of view it is in many ways much inferior to Weber’s, and Mendelssohn would certainly have looked down on it in scorn. It is the vividness of the motives, he thinks; “I have never been grudging.” It consists entirely of motives, he continues, and his theme for Tannhäuser, for instance, broke with the usual custom of making the second subject a graceful one; he believes that, placed beside preceding works of greater musical accomplishment, it nevertheless looks new. In conclusion he says he enjoys watching me while his music is being played; he will stage performances and seat himself with his glasses so that he can watch me, for that is something worth seeing; and he blesses me, and blissfully we go off to bed.